Zaha Hadid

Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid (Arabic: زَها محمد حسين حديد اللهيبي, Zahā Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi and British architect, artist, and designer. She is recognised as a key figure in the architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and later enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972. In search of an alternative to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as a method to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building".

She was described by The Guardian as the "Queen of Curves", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity". Her major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome's MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House. Some of her awards have been presented posthumously, including the statuette for the 2017 Brit Awards. She was also recognized by the 2013 Forbes List as one of the "World's Most Powerful Women". Several of her buildings were still under construction at the time of her death, including the Daxing International Airport in Beijing and the Al Wakrah Stadium (now Al Janoub) in Qatar, a venue for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. She also received the UK's most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in February 2016, the month before her death, she became the first woman to be individually awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Ray Eames and Sheila O'Donnell had previously received it jointly with Charles Eames and John Tuomey respectively).

Early life and family

Zaha Hadid was born on 31 October 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq, to an upper-class Iraqi family. Her father, Muhammad al-Hajj Husayn Hadid, was a wealthy industrialist from Mosul. He co-founded the socialist al-Ahali group in 1932, a significant political organisation in the 1930s and 1940s. He also co-founded the National Democratic Party in Iraq and served as minister of finance after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état, under the government of General Abd al-Karim Qasim. Her mother, Wajiha al-Sabunji, was an artist from Mosul and her brother, Foulath Hadid, was a writer, accountant and expert on Arab affairs. In an interview, Hadid recalled that early childhood trips to the ancient Sumerian cities in southern Iraq sparked her interest in architecture. In the 1960s, she attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland. Hadid was unmarried and had no children.

Career

Hadid studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving, in 1972, to London to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. There she studied with Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis and Bernard Tschumi. Her former professor Koolhaas described her at graduation as "a planet in her own orbit." Zenghelis described her as the most outstanding pupil he ever taught. 'We called her the inventor of the 89 degrees. Nothing was ever at 90 degrees. She had spectacular vision. All the buildings were exploding into tiny little pieces." He recalled that she was less interested in details, such as staircases. "The way she drew a staircase you would smash your head against the ceiling, and the space was reducing and reducing, and you would end up in the upper corner of the ceiling. She couldn't care about tiny details. Her mind was on the broader picture—when it came to the joinery she knew we could fix that later. She was right." Her AA graduation thesis, Malevich's Tektonik, was a concept and design for a 14-level hotel on London's Hungerford Bridge executed as an acrylic painting, inspired by the works of the Suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich.

After graduation in 1977, she went to work for her former professors, Koolhaas and Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Through her association with Koolhaas, she met the architectural engineer Peter Rice, who supported and encouraged her during the early stages of her career. Hadid became a naturalised citizen of the United Kingdom. She opened her own architectural firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, in London in 1980. During the early 1980s, Hadid introduced audiences to a new modern architectural style through her highly detailed and professional sketches. At a time when architectural focus was shifting toward postmodernism, her approach stood out and set apart from other designers.

She then began her teaching career at the Architectural Association and later held positions at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge University, the University of Chicago, the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Columbia University. She earned her early reputation through lecturing and radical, colourful designs and projects, which were widely published in architectural journals but largely remained unbuilt. Her ambitious but unrealized projects included The Peak in Hong Kong (1983) and a plan for an opera house in Cardiff, Wales, (1994). The Cardiff experience was particularly discouraging: although her design was selected as the best by the competition jury, the Millennium Commission, acting as funding body, refused to support it, and the project was awarded to another architect. Hadid responded to the decision by asking "Do they want nothing but mediocrity?". Her reputation during this period rested largely on her teaching and the imaginative, vibrant paintings she made of her proposed buildings.

Her international profile rose significantly in 1988 when she was selected as one of seven architects featured in the "Deconstructivism in Architecture" exhibition curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley at New York's Museum of Modern Art. That exhibition, along with a conference at the Tate in London and increased press coverage, helped establish her name globally and allowed her work to be associated with a distinct architectural style.

Early buildings (1991–2005)

Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany (1991–1993)

One of her first clients was Rolf Fehlbaum, the president-director general of the Swiss furniture firm Vitra, and later, from 2004 to 2010, a member of the jury for the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1989, Fehlbaum had invited Frank Gehry, then little-known, to build a design museum at the Vitra factory in Weil-am-Rhein. In 1993, he invited Hadid to design a small fire station for the factory. Her design, made of raw concrete and glass, was a sculptural work composed of sharp diagonal forms colliding together in the centre. The design plans appeared in architecture magazines before construction. When completed, it only served as a fire station for a short period of time, as Weil am Rhein soon opened their own fire station. It became an exhibit space instead, and is now on display with the works of Gehry and other well-known architects. It was the launching pad of her architectural career.

Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria (1999–2002)

Hadid designed a public housing estate in Berlin (1986–1993) and organised an exhibition, "The Great Utopia" (1992), at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her next major project was a ski jump at Bergisel, in Innsbruck Austria. The old ski jump, built in 1926, had been used in the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. The new structure was to contain not only a ski jump, but also a cafe with 150 seats offering a 360-degree view of the mountains. Hadid had to fight against traditionalists and against time; the project had to be completed in one year, before the next international competition. Her design is 48 metres high and rests on a base seven metres by seven metres. She described it as "an organic hybrid", a cross between a bridge and a tower, which by its form gives a sense of movement and speed.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States (1997–2003)

At the end of the 1990s, her career began to gather momentum, as she won commissions for two museums and a large industrial building. She competed against Rem Koolhaas and other well-known architects for the design of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio (1997–2003). She won, and became the first woman to design an art museum in the United States. At 8,500 square metres, the museum was not huge, and her design did not have the flamboyance of the Guggenheim Bilbao of Frank Gehry, built at the same time. But the project demonstrated Hadid's ability to use architectural forms to create interior drama, including its central element, a 30-metre long black stairway that passes between massive curving and angular concrete walls.